(16th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year B; This homily was given on 21 & 22 July, 2012 at St. Joseph's Church in Woonsocket, R.I. and on 22 July, 2012 at St. Peter's Church in Warwick, R.I. See Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Mark 6:30-34)
How well do you handle interruptions? When you are at home, relaxing and reading a
good book; or when you are watching your favorite TV show; or maybe when you
are at work and your labor is positively productive…and then suddenly the phone
rings, or someone arrives unexpected…How well do you handle that?
I ask that question because Christ in our Gospel this
weekend is interrupted. He is doing one of the most essential and
important things in His work with the twelve Apostles: teaching them how to
rest, how to be still.
These men are about to be sent out by Christ to spread the
Gospel message to the ends of the earth.
In their apostolic ministry they will be active to the point of
exhaustion. Therefore Jesus longs to
teach them how to be at peace and to pray, because it is there that they will
find a source of strength for untiring service, a wellspring for pastoral zeal. But just as Christ begins to teach them these
vital lessons in the spiritual life, he is suddenly interrupted!
While Christ and the twelve Apostles “went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place” (Mark 6:32), a veritable throng of
people, anticipating the direction in which He was heading, arrived at the
place before Him.
Jesus’ response to that interruption is amazing. He was not bothered by them. He was not even disappointed at the lost
opportunity to spend some quiet time with the Twelve. No, St. Mark tells us in fact that He was
overwhelmed with love:
When he disembarked
and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were
like sheep without a shepherd.
—Mark 6:34
He saw those people and sensed deep within Himself that they
were hungry, but not for bread; He intuited that they were thirsty, but not for
water. They were hungering and thirsting
for the living God, and so He fed them.
As St. Mark tells us, “He began
to teach them many things” (Mark 6: 34). They were being fed by God, shepherded by Christ,
the Good Shepherd. In a word, they were
being loved.
This beautiful outpouring of compassionate love we find in
the Gospel this weekend is a fulfillment of the prophesy we listened to in the
first reading this morning, from the Book
of the Prophet Jeremiah. Noting the
widespread suffering and hopeless sorrow of the time, Jeremiah attributes the afflictions
of his people to bad leadership, bad shepherds.
Woe to the shepherds
who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord.
—Jeremiah 23:1
God will come out against these shepherds! He will not tolerate bad shepherds who
scatter the sheep and feed themselves on His people. But nor will He leave His people alone to be
scattered and lost. “I myself will gather the remnant of my
flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to
their meadow” (Jeremiah 23:3).
God Himself will walk among His sheep, feeding them,
pasturing them. Jesus Christ is that
Good Shepherd, leading His sheep to the restful waters of everlasting
life. He will pour Himself out on the
altar of the cross to redeem and save the lost and the weary.
But God continues, through the Prophet Jeremiah, “I will appoint shepherds for them who will
shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble” (Jeremiah
23:4). “I will give you shepherds” (Jeremiah
3:15), God assures them.
Those words in Latin—Pastores dabo vobis, I will give you
shepherds—are the opening words of a document written by our late beloved
Holy Father, Blessed John Paul II, back in 1992. Reflecting
on the vital work of forming men for the priesthood of Jesus Christ, Blessed
John Paul II reminds us that our hopes rest on nothing less than the
faithfulness of God!
God has promised that the Church will never be without
shepherds to guide and guard Her in the faith.
§
The ineffable gift of the body and blood of
Christ that comes to us in the Holy Eucharist is a gift from God, a gift from
Heaven…but it comes to us only through the hands and voice of the priest.
§
The overwhelming consolation of sacramental
absolution, when we confess our sins with true sorrow in the Sacrament of
Reconciliation entrusted to the Church by Christ Himself for the forgiveness of
sins, those words of mercy and new life which come to us from Christ come to us
through the priest.
We will never be without these gifts, we will never be
without shepherds called by God and appointed to feed His flock. But Blessed John Paul II reminds us that such
a promise, such remarkable fidelity, calls for our own response in kind:
The total trust in God’s unconditional faithfulness to his promise is
accompanied in the Church by the grave responsibility to cooperate in the action
of God who calls.
—Blessed John Paul
II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, #2
God will never cease to call men to the priesthood, will
never cease to appoint shepherds for His people; yet we must never cease to open our hearts to whatever He is asking of
us for the fulfillment of that promise.
In short, we must be as willing
as Christ is in the Gospel this weekend, to be interrupted. We must be willing to allow God to interrupt
our Church and our personal lives, to do whatever He wants us to do so that His
promise will take root and flourish in our midst.
I can attest to this
personally in my life. In my early
twenties I had my own plan for my life; I wanted to be married, to have a
family. I wanted to be successful in a
career that would allow me to be fulfilled and happy. All good things. But then suddenly that plan was completely interrupted!
For the first time in my life I felt that God was calling
out to me, and that He was calling me to the priesthood. I did not hear a voice audibly from
Heaven. I did not see an angel or
experience any supernatural visions. But
I was certain that God was speaking to my heart, calling me to follow Him. More and more each day I felt that He was calling
me to the priesthood.
About that same time, people from Saints John and Paul
Parish where I had grown up, where I was baptized and received my First
Communion; in the place where I received the Sacrament of Confirmation; people
in that parish began to approach me and ask if I might be called to serve the
Church as a priest. Sometimes even
people I did not know or recognize would approach and ask me that question:
“Have you ever thought about the priesthood?”
Finally in 1998 I entered the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence.
Now, in 1997 there were only two seminarians in that
place. One of them left, and some people
even suggested that the seminary should be closed down. Nonetheless, in 1998 seven of us began studies
there for the priesthood. The next year
there were ten of us. I continued my formation
for four more years in the North American College in Rome and was ordained to
the priesthood on June 26, 2004. By that
time the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence began to receive men from nearby
dioceses around New England and even as far as Baltimore. The number of college-age men studying for
the priesthood grew to around two dozen.
For the last two years we have had 27 seminarians in formation for the
priesthood at Our Lady of Providence from seven separate dioceses. We
have a full house with no empty rooms, because God is faithful.
Pastores dabo vobis. I will give
you shepherds. The Lord has
consistently fulfilled His promise down through the centuries, and He calls each
one of us to be faithful and to respond to His abundant grace in our lives and
in His Church. But to do so will involve
interruption! Are we willing to be
interrupted by God so that His work will continue to flourish? I would suggest that there are three ways God
is challenging us to be interrupted as we respond to His fidelity in providing
shepherds for the Church.
Firstly, we allow God to interrupt our spiritual lives, our prayer
lives, as we ask Him fervently for an increase of vocations to the priesthood
in the Diocese of Providence.
Prayer was the only instruction Christ gave us with regard to increasing
vocations (Luke 10:2). Perhaps we do not
always have vocations in the Church
because we do not always ask for
vocations in the Church. The people of
Ss. John and Paul Parish were asking God for vocations, and within a five-year period three of us from that parish were ordained to the priesthood. If you ask God for an increase in vocations,
He will listen to you. Allow God to
interrupt your prayer life as you “ask
the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2).
Secondly, we must be willing to allow God to interrupt our families and
the plans that we have for the people we love. My parents have been overwhelmingly supportive
from the very beginning of my discernment of a priestly vocation. Such is not always the case, unfortunately,
in the Church today. Having spent six
years as a seminarian, and having worked in seminary formation for an
additional four years, I can share with you that it is not at all uncommon for the
mother or father of a seminarian to be unsupportive as he begins to respond to God’s
call in his life.
Truth be told, these situations seldom discourage me. What discourages me is when I think of all the
young men who I may never meet, who I may never encounter in the seminary,
because their mothers or fathers did not support them in answering a call to
the priesthood.
Often it is the case that parents want good things for their
sons: a successful career, a family, happiness; all good things. But they are unable to consider that God desires
to give them even greater gifts, and fruitfulness that will endure for an
eternity beyond this world. Are we
willing to allow God to interrupt our families so that this fruitfulness may
continue in the Church?
Finally, I would suggest we allow God to interrupt our lives through a
willingness to approach those who we think He might be calling to the
priesthood and to share courageously the gift of God that we have come to
recognize in them. Is it
possible that God is calling someone from your parish or your family to the
priesthood? Is it possible that you are
called to pray for that person and even to approach him on some personal level
and offer your support and encouragement?
Pastores dabo vobis. I will give
you shepherds. God is so very
faithful in His promise and provision of shepherds for His Church. How is He challenging us this week, and every
week, to cooperate in that promise and to allow vocations to the priesthood to
flourish in our time?
